


Wrath and Ruin

by thepottermalfoyproblem



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, dwarf mage theory, origin of the casteless, the original corruption of the golden city
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 11:44:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4058776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepottermalfoyproblem/pseuds/thepottermalfoyproblem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corypheus said that when they arrived, the City was already corrupted. That the gods had left their seats and their home stood empty. Red lyrium holds within it the blight, yet predates the blight. So who corrupted the city to start with?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrath and Ruin

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on my very painful headcanon about the dwarves in Dragon Age, which in turn is based on observations by other tumblr users. More information can be found [here](http://varricsbooty.tumblr.com/post/116638106189/) and [here](http://varricsbooty.tumblr.com/post/119850455221/).

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. My mentor told me that our research would benefit us for generations to come. Our watchful guardians thought so too and sent us into the fadesleep with fanfare and rejoicing.

It was the mistake of an eternity. Our return was heralded with chaos rather than feasting. Battered and broken from seeming days trapped in a wild and unfamiliar fade, we stepped into a dying world filled with lyrium red as the blood spilled on the steps of the golden city, diseased as the wrath of the gods we had betrayed. Seeming days were in reality years, we returned strangers.

It was a blessing and a curse.

Our guardians were gone, succumbed to the corruption, so they could not condemn us for our prideful folly. Folly they had shared. But we were sealed off from the world, surrounded by the bones of those we left behind. All that remained was to wait for the inevitable end in a home that had become a tomb.

While the others maintained hope and vainly searched for a way out, I wandered in an attempt to piece together what had happened while we slumbered. I was horrified at what I found.

My brethren of the stone had abandoned reason in those sealed halls, worshipping the very blighted thing that stemmed from our grievous mistake. Our stubborn pride and search for knowledge had brought nothing but ruin on our people. Ruin and madness and, in the end, death. Just as the gods had foretold before they cast is from the city, cursing us and all our people for our arrogance at coming so far uninvited and unlooked for.

Nevermore would my brethren easily taste the sweet bite of magic dancing through their veins. Nevermore would they dream peacefully and walk the gardens of the fade. We were the last, and we doomed our race for eternity. Cut them off from the wellspring of light and life.

Had we stopped and merely marveled at the gates, checked our advance and examined our purposes, would the end have been so terrible? Like children we stumbled into the unknown, but we were not children. And the gods are not parents, so forgiving and gentle. We lost many on those hard golden steps, blood hissing against that holy ground.

We dared and were therefore doomed. At last, in the hands of a guardian, held fast even as he leaned against the solid wall set before the Deep Roads, I found the final pieces of the puzzle. An edict and a spell. Undoing and salvation.

The sealing of our ancient home, thaig of the mages since the dawn of time, had been ordered by someone called Paragon Ilona. I wondered what a paragon was, but only briefly as the next words caught my eye and my blood boiled with fury.

All mages and families of mages had been stripped of caste, erased from the memories, and sealed inside with the corruption to purge the taint from the population. No longer would my people be burdened with the unpredictable force of the capricious fade.

We truly were the last, I realized with dawning horror. Even as I opened the spell I prayed to the stone that some had escaped into the Deep Roads, that some had survived.

I dare not pray to the gods that had rained destruction on my people. Nor did I wish to ever again.

In the end, I took the spell to my remaining brethren. We joined the desperate few who performed it before us.

We ate of the very thing we cursed the world with, choked down the toxic evidence of our sin.

We became something other than our mortal shells.

We, no longer dwarves, but Profane.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this and want to cry over dwarves of both Middle Earth and Thedas, my [tumblr](http://goldberryintherushes.tumblr.com) is always open.


End file.
